WOMEN PEACE-BUILDING STORIES

YOUNG DIASPORA MATTERS!

Engaging Young Women in the Diaspora in Women, Peace and Security

Women for Peace and Participation (WPP) organised forum for engaging young women in the diaspora on 15 October 2018 at the centre for Women, Peace and Security, LSE. Aims of the forum were recognising the key importance of young diasporas’ women, Women for Peace and Participation will, with key speakers and experts, introduce young diasporas’ women to the current engagement strategies, collect their vision on how could be sustainably engaged in women peace and security issues, and present an overview of its leadership programme For young women.

In line with resolution 1325, Women for Peace and Participation (WPP) recognizes the importance of women’s participation in peace-building processes at community and policy levels aiming to achieve women’s effective role in creating a peaceful society. The international agenda on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) should demand the inclusion of women at all levels including those of the diasporas. And such commitment should a result in creating effective avenues to engage younger generations of women peacebuilders.

In this context, young diasporas’ women represent a monumental force. young diasporas should be empowered to reach their full leadership potential. Enabling environments should be built to give young diasporas’ women effective and meaningful avenues to engage, connect and develop. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: ‘Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society’s margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies.’

WOMEN PEACE-BUILDING STORIES

NAJIA ZEWARI - From Refugee to Peacemaker

A peace-builder from Afghanistan, whose life time achievements are briefly described in her story bellow: From Refugee to Peacemaker

I grew up in Afghanistan in the ‘70s and ’80s, which was a time of great political transition and state repression. The Leftists wanted to abolish the monarchy and modernise the state and the Rightists wanted to maintain their power. During that time, I lead a very modern, middle-class life just like any child in Europe but much more privileged than the majority of Afghans. By the time I fled my country, I was a university student, and like millions of refugees, I walked over the mountains to Pakistan to an unknown destination and uncertain future.

The situation heightened my political inclinations, which had manifest themselves early on. As a child I was always looking for solutions to the constant rows between my siblings because I couldn’t tolerate conflict. It made me think deeply about issues, especially women’s issues. I am not a rebel by nature, but the situation for women demanded that I speak out about our rights even when I returned to Afghanistan under Taliban rule, which was unbelievably miserable. I was determined that women would share in the political process.

Since then I have represented women in jirgas from Tokyo to Bonn to Brussels. I have served on the Transitional Jirga, the Constitutional? Loya Jirga, the Af-Pak Peace Jirga and the National Consultative Peace Jirga. I was appointed to the leadership of the National Consultative Peace Jirga by sixteen-hundred delegates, which meant tribal leaders had to take into account the recommendations of women delegates and include them in peace processes including the establishment of the High Peace Council.

I co-founded the Afghan Women Network and with other advocates, and I helped produce the first draft of the UNSCR 1325 Action plan.

Peace Building

As a refugee, I learned a lot by talking with people in the battlefield, I worked in the camps and saw the impact pain and war had on the lives of individuals and how vulnerable it made people who were forced to flee their country. That feeling made dedicate my life to helping the defenceless.

At 25, I was managing an organisation with 85 staff. We worked in the most conservative refugee camps implementing literacy and vocational training programmes, health awareness and employment programmes. My job included fundraising and liaising with international community representatives. I also set up a resource centre for refugee women to come together for support.

I saw those people every day. The injured and traumatised, women and children, who shared their stories of living as stateless refugees and every day was a life-and-death struggle. I realised personally what it meant not to have legal status when I was part of a group of Afghan women refugees invited to attend the World Women Forum in 1991. The only document we had was a piece of paper which we discovered was invalid when we were in transit. We were held for many hours before finally being allowed to fly to Washington.

Challenges

In each political situation, the challenges are different. In the refugee camps in Pakistan, I came across a great deal of prejudice when I had to deal with men. Most thought, incorrectly, that education for women was against traditional values. One time I talked to a community elder about organising literacy classes for women and after our discussion, he turned to his colleagues and said, “hey guys, women are knowledgeable and can know about community issues.’’

Most men, however, resist change and women cannot break into those patriarchal networks where deals are brokered. Men see no reason to relinquish power nor do they see any role for or value women. As women have no political, financial, military or tribal power, they consequently have little to bargain with. When women do put their heads above the parapet, they often received death threats and many have been killed. My role has been to challenge, change and build trust. That is part of my responsibility as deputy chair of the National Peace Consultative Jirga and as the secretary and executive committee member of the High Peace Council.

Successes

In the post-Taliban state building peace processes, Afghan women have demonstrated remarkable unity despite political, ideological and ethnic differences.

ln the Af-Pak Peace Jirga, the Afghan organisers were reluctant to be the first to announce female participation due to honour issues. I initiated the advocacy and brought women on board, and with other civil society activists, we ensured a female presence at the peace talks. In this Jirga, I was the second deputy and the only woman and had to convince Jihadis and tribal leaders of the importance of respecting women as equal citizens and peace builders.

Women Are the Answer

Women have proved they play a vital role as peace-makers at the international and national level but also at a fundamental level by instilling core values in their families and in the wider community by promoting peace, unity and coexistence.

WOMEN PEACE-BUILDING STORIES

Maryam Amarkharkhila (WPP Afghanistan Volunteer) is from the Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan. Her family members became refugees in Pakistan during the Taliban regime. Her father worked in Iran on a daily wage to help support his family financially. He wanted to educate his children so they wouldnt have a future like his. Maryam’s father faced all kinds of problems in Pakistan but he never gave up on educating his children. Her father started working in a brick kiln. Maryam recalls: ‘I was six then and I told my father that I would work and help him. He took my hands in his and said, your thoughts are bigger than yourself, but that’s not what you should do." Later, Maryam started carpet weaving in her neighborhood and made flowers out of date leaves. She started attending school. There came a day when her father told her that they were going back to Afghanistan because it was a free country once and they had a president named Hamid Karzai.

Back in her village in Afghanistan, Maryam’s father was called an honor-less man for sending his daughter to school. At that time, eight-year-old Maryam thought something had to be done to encourage girls to attend school and break the taboo of parents being honor-less if they sent their daughters for studies. Maryam suggested to the headmaster that there should be a national anthem and exercise classes at school. Her suggestion was accepted and practiced. Noticing her higher aptitude level, she was asked by teachers to help teach other children in lower grades/classes. Later, she started teaching the same material to girls regardless of their age, who were not allowed to attend school, at their homes in her village. When she was introduced to their families, they came to personally know her and appreciated her. She started asking their fathers to let them attend schools. She told them, "Uncle, please help your daughter become a doctor by letting her go to school. It’s the only way they help sick women in our village". She was able to mobilize a community in favor of girls education at a very young age.

After a few years, more and more girls were attending her school. Soon the Taliban started sending ‘night letters’ to her school. The school was close to her village, but not inside it. There came a day when her school was set ablaze by terrorists. After awhile, school resumed normal activities, but again came under a rocket attack and as a result many people withdrew their daughters’ names from school. Maryam was chased by a man holding a knife on a motorcycle and they shouted threats at her while she ran for her life on her way home from school.

Later, Maryam received a permit, through her father, to create a primary school inside her village so people would not have the excuse of the other school being too far away. Her father started teachingat the primary school. Maryam anonymously wrote an enormous amount of articles on women’s rights for different magazines including their right to education and on customs such as the dowry and giving girls in exchange for settling disputes, etc. It was no easy matter for a young girl in a faraway village in Afghanistan. Maryam was eleven years old when she arranged simulation sessions for school girls and boys to understand how to approach different matters including family disputes, voting in elections, why it is important for women to vote, etc.

Maryam was not able to continue her studies in Maidan Wardak since her school was attacked and the other school she helped set up was at the primary level. Maryam moved to Kabul to live with her uncle’s family there. She started sewing people’s clothes and contributed to the rent of their house. Meanwhile, she did not abandon her social activities and helped girls in her neighborhood. She arranged seminars through her school on womens and childrens rights.

Maryam was told that one of her male relatives was sent to Pakistan for suicide training through his madrasa in her village. She travelled back to Maidan Wardak alone and met the person who was responsible for sending students abroad to get training for terrorist activities. She threatened to report him to the authorities if he didn’t give her the contact information of her relative. At first he threatened her and said, "One bullet is enough for you", but upon her insistence, he later gave her a phone number which she used to talk her relative out of Pakistan by telling him that his mother was extremely sick and wanted to see him. Once back in village, she talked with him and his family about a peaceful Afghanistan and how young men and women should be working develop Afghanistan and not kill and torture other fellow men. The man chose not to go to that madrasa again. Similarly, Maryam spoke with different people about a peaceful Afghanistan in her village who were contacted by Taliban for recruitment. Some of her relatives did listen to her and gave up on their intentions.

Soon the word spread and her family started to receive threats on regular basis. Once, armed men went to her house in Maidan Wardak and threatened to kill her whole family if she didn’t stop her ‘propaganda’. Someone even left abusive and obscene messages on the door of her village mosque about Maryam once. In those messages, she was accused of promoting ‘democracy’ which is considered un-Islamic by many uneducated people. In one instance, Maryam was followed in Kabul by an unknown man and was physically attacked. She says, "He started slapping me so hard and said, ‘you are misleading other women with you’". In another instance, Maryam was nearly abducted by armed men when she sat in a car thinking it was a city taxi. The man who tried to abduct her disguised as a woman in blue burqa and threatened her, "Let me teach you women’s rights’". She managed to open the door and jump out of the car close to a police checkpoint next to Afghan-German hospital in Kabul.

Maryam was studying in Kabul away from her family, working part-time sewing people’s clothes for a living and was supporting a few other girls from her neighborhood in buying pens and notebooks for their schools who were not able to afford it. She moved her six-year-old sister with her from Maidan Wardak to Kabul to help her study in a relatively secure environment. Back home, her father was teaching at the primary school she helped build in her village. She encouraged her father to complete his studies and he did. Maryam was able to encourage her father to finish his studies and when she was in final year of her undergraduate studies, after his undergraduate studies, her father graduated from the Darul-Malimin-Pedagogy program in Maidan Wardak.

Maryam contacted other women with financial problems in the neighborhood in Kabul if they could sew clothes and created a small network. She started selling her sewn clothes in Kota-Sangi market and used the money to buy more fabric and gave it to women to sew more clothes. Maryam believes that "eating fish is good but learning how to catch a fish is even better". So she also started teaching women how to sew in the meantime. She founded an association for women who want to sell their handicrafts.

She graduated from Kabul University’s 1394 undergraduate program. Maryam also anonymously wrote on women’s rights and democracy. She also worked with the Afghan Ministry of Borders and Tribal Affairs. Maryam also worked in the field of psychological counselling to help young women cope with effects of war and other societal pressures with the help of her university professors. She also has taken part in polio vaccine campaigns. She is an active member of the famously known Afghan women’s poetry club Merman Baheer where she works with other women on issues concerning them and others. Currently she works with a radio where she makes programs on women’s issues particularly affected by domestic abuse and raises awareness through her work. She also founded an association of 400 women from almost all provinces of Afghanistan who make handicrafts. Her association is called Zartaar-"Golden Thread". Her association is working on an exhibition of handicrafts by Afghan women in order for them to find access to international markets for a sustainable livelihood.

Impressed with her tireless work, many of her relatives followed Maryam’s footsteps and started sending their daughters to schools. Back in her village, unfortunately, the Taliban have taken over most parts of the area and have banned girls from going to schools. Maryam has not given up and is trying to persuade the Qari of her village madrasa to hold talks with the Taliban to let girls study at least until primary level in her village. Maryam says, "I want to continue to work for a peaceful Afghanistan at the grassroots level, where the real deal is. I am hopeful every Afghan will live the life they deserve as human beings."

Maryam proved in practice that a girl can be a leader and work for the betterment of herself and her community. She is the hero of many women in Afghanistan who are not allowed to speak for themselves or others. She is the voice of ordinary Afghan women who form the basic and biggest part of the society.

INDIRA KARTALLOZI, FOUNDER OF THE MIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS NETWORK;

I have this hope every morning when I wake up which is created by the freedom of being at home, being free, being alive, being healthy, fit, and being able to choose what I want to do with my day.

When I was growing up [in Kosovo] I initially thought of being an architect. But in a country where the female was secondary, my father said, “Oh no, that’s not a career for women”. I was quite creative in writing and reading a lot and my mother said, “Well, why don’t you study language?” So that’s how I ended up studying Albanian language and literature.

Having to stop my studies and leave the country [during the war in Kosovo], now I wasn’t looking at my career but instead how to survive in a new country. Somehow those dreams and hopes go away, they do not become a priority. At the time I was a mother as well, my son was ten months old.

Being a refugee at that time truly has affected the way I think about myself. Back home, I was respected and praised for the things I did. In the UK I lacked that, I didn’t have any of that praise even though I was working hard. In the UK, although you feel safe, the fact that you are not free to pursue your hopes and dreams, it damages your identity.

I was working as an interpreter. I spoke English, Serbian and Albanian and it was easy for me to earn a living because the need for languages was high, due to the war in the Balkans. That put me in front of refugees. Initially, the role is quite impartial. You cannot engage into any emotional or practical things that are going on. But I found myself often wanting to be that person who gives the advice, because I felt ‘I’ve been through this myself’. Gradually I trained myself to become an advocate.

I want people to treat refugees as normal human beings, to the point where I almost wish there was no labeling at all. I want people to treat refugees with respect, not pity. I want people to understand that the world is changing and sooner or later, whether we want it or not, we will have diversity in every corner of the world. And the sooner we start treating people with respect, the better.

Indira Kartallozi is a social entrepreneur, educator, human rights activist and forced migration expert. She is the founder of Chrysalis Family Futures, a social enterprise working with vulnerable and marginalized families, and the Migrant Entrepreneurs Network, an organization that connects, supports and develops migrant entrepreneurs worldwide. You can read the full version of this interview here.

Recent Event

“Afghanistan Program Report Jan 2016 - March 2017” Launch

On the 5th of July 2017, Women for Peace and Participation (WPP) had a successful launch of its 2016 – 2017 Afghanistan report at the UK Houses of Parliament. WPP Afghanistan’s initiatives and the subsequent report was well received by the attendees which included senior members and advisers of the Parliament as well as members of the Afghan diaspora, representatives of international organizations and that of Afghan and UK governments.

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Women for Peace and Participation’s aims to promote social and political inclusion and provision of opportunities for excluded groups of women and youth, to shape policies for a safer future for all through their participation in social and political processes.